Situationism and trait-eliciting situations

Abstract Doris, in his 2002 book Lack of Character and 2005 paper ‘Replies: evidence sensibility’, famously argues that we lack the kinds global character traits posited by theories virtue, because situationist experiments demonstrate people do not display trait-relevant behaviour situations above chance. This some notable are situations. By analysing which factors improve or reduce participants’ chances success (e.g. stress, familiarity, ambiguity), observing these decrease agents’ capacity to recognize respond a variety reasons settings, best explanation many subjects’ failure right thing is they affected capacity-compromising. matters, settings agents have reduced avoid wrongdoing typically apt tests an agent’s traits.